I'd caution against putting too much faith in those raw numbers without a
clear understanding of what they mean. They can make sense comparing
different language editions of the same project, but comparing different
projects is apples and oranges. For instance, some months ago I was doing
some research and I found that for Wikisource it doesn't count the "Page"
and "Index" namespaces as "articles", even though that's where the
bulk of
the content generation is taking place these days.
This might have since been fixed, and I'm sure that you (Phillipe) are aware
of it, I just wanted to jump in before someone started complaining that
Wikinews is only a certain unimpressive %age of where Wikipedia was at the
same point.
Cheers,
Craig
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:49:01 -0700
From: Philippe Beaudette <philippe(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying?
Really?
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
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Usage statistics alone, I would agree with you.
But stats can tell so much more than just what you get from usage stats.
For instance:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikinews/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm (be
sure to scroll all the way to the right).
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
On 09/20/11 10:11 PM, ?????? wrote:
Certain projects are bound to loose active
contributors. Projects like
Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies or even Wiktionary do not have the
same
> growth curve as a general purpose encyclopedia. These tools have
serious
> > competition as well. Statistically looking at numbers is unwise unless
> you
> > are going to look at it with a perspective. This is not to say these
> > projects are without problem, but that doesn't mean the wikis are
> failures.
>
>
> This is all very true. The important thing is to keep focused
on your
> own project. If you look at competing projects, rather than looking at
> their usage statistics, a better question is "What are they failing to
> do that you could do better?"
> Ray
>
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